THE SPOKESMAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2022 A9
Redmond’s Andrew Kaza chronicles
Oregon’s biggest basketball game
“That experience forever
impacted his world view of
prejudice and discrimination,”
according to his author biogra-
phy on the Nestucca Spit Press
website.
BY JAYSON JACOBY
CO Media Group
A
ndrew Kaza always fig-
ured someone ought
to make a movie about
the most famous basketball
game in Baker High School
history.
Then he realized nobody had
even written a book.
So Kaza, who lives in Red-
mond, decided he would fill this
void in the annals of Oregon
high school athletics, one that
had existed for half a century.
Kaza’s book, “High Contrast:
A Story of Basketball, Race and
Politics in Oregon 1972,” was re-
leased in late
August.
The author,
who grew up
in Beaverton
and lives in
Redmond,
recounts the
Kaza
March 25,
1972, Class
AAA boys state championship
basketball game in Portland’s
Memorial Coliseum, pitting
the underdog Baker Bulldogs
against the powerful Jefferson
Democrats from Portland.
Not that there can be much
suspense after 50 years, but
Baker lost, 59-52.
The game was much closer,
though, than many of the pun-
dits had predicted.
Baker actually led for much
of the game, and by as many as 7
points twice in the third quarter.
The Bulldogs’ last lead, 50-49,
came with less than 4 minutes
left in the game.
Yet it wasn’t just the surpris-
ingly competitive contest that
made that Saturday night, inside
what was then Oregon’s biggest
arena, so memorable.
A combination of other fac-
tors, some hinted at in the title of
Kaza’s book, gives that 32-min-
ute game the powerful legacy
that lingers, in the memories of
those who were on the court and
in the stands.
And it’s a game that retains a
fascination even for some who
weren’t there.
Kaza, for instance.
The author, now 63, was 12
then. And although he was a ra-
bid sports fan — he attended all
the games during the 1969 state
tournament — he didn’t make
it to the epochal 1972 champi-
onship.
But he said he came to un-
derstand, even as a boy, that the
Baker-Jefferson game was ex-
traordinary.
The main title of his book is
a succinct explanation — “High
Contrast.”
There were in fact many con-
trasts.
It is all but impossible to de-
pict the differences without re-
sorting to cliché, but they’re no
less true.
Baker was rural and small
town and white.
When you watched coach
Gary Hammond’s players you
might be forgiven for wondering
if the 1960s had ever happened.
The Bulldogs’ crew cuts were
as solidly 1950s as tailfins and
Sputnik.
And Hammond’s basketball
style was as traditional as his
tonsorial requirements. Baker
played a methodical, precise
game, one that relied on crisp
passing to get open shots.
Jefferson was urban and met-
ropolitan and all the players
were Black.
Some of the Democrats
Photo Courtesy of Ann Ross
The 1972 Baker High School boys basketball team. Top row, left to
right: Head Coach Gary Hammond, Rick Scrivner, Craig Erickson, Wes
Morgan, Daryl Ross, Mike Davis, Mark Johnson, Randy Daugherty, As-
sistant Coach John Heriza. Bottom row, left to right: Statistician Gerry
Steele, Tim Wood, Fred Warner Jr., Greg Sackos, Dick Sheehy, and man-
ager Verl Cote.
trasts, was all but irresistible.
“The whole state was capti-
vated by that state tournament,”
Kaza said.
Nestucca Spit Press
Andrew Kaza’s new book chron-
icles the 1972 Oregon Class AAA
state championship basketball
game between the Baker Bulldogs
and the Jefferson Democrats.
sported Afros.
And they played at a frenetic
pace.
This collision of disparate
styles no doubt contributed to
the unprecedented interest in
the championship game.
A total of 13,395 people
crammed into the Coliseum —
729 more than the listed capacity
for the arena where the Portland
Trail Blazers, the city’s year-old
NBA franchise, played.
It was the largest crowd to
watch a high school basketball
game in Oregon.
And never had so many peo-
ple watched a Baker team play.
Both those records remain
unchallenged half a century
later.
Kaza, in a phone interview
about his book on Friday, Sept.
16, said he understood the allure
of high school sports.
His dad was a teacher in Port-
land schools for 25 years, and he
also was a band and orchestra
leader, taking student musicians
to perform at games.
“As a kid I got to tag along to
a lot of football and basketball
games,” Kaza said.
In his book he explores the
popularity of high school sports
in 1972 — a level of interest that
is difficult to imagine today.
The Blazers, Kaza points out,
were a new franchise, and had
not yet become the Oregon in-
stitution they would be five years
later when they won their only
NBA title.
The Oregon and Oregon
State football and men’s bas-
ketball teams were not national
contenders — and in any case
college sports weren’t yet the
nationwide ratings behemoths
we’re accustomed to.
“High school sports was just
the top of the pile,” Kaza said.
And so the 1972 champion-
ship game, with its myriad con-
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A CONTEXT BEYOND SPORTS
Although the basketball game
is the centerpiece of “High Con-
trast,” Kaza said he sought to put
sports into context with society,
both in Oregon and in the na-
tion, in 1972.
“It was a different era,” he said.
Americans were still fighting
in Vietnam.
Richard Nixon was running
for his second term.
The game featuring Baker’s
“farm boys” and Jefferson’s more
flamboyant team illustrated a
term that Kaza said has only
in more recent times become
something of a cliché itself —
“the urban-rural divide.”
“And here we have it on the
basketball court,” Kaza said.
But he notes, too, that unlike
Oregon’s political divide, which
tends to separate people into
groups that have little to do with
each other except for social me-
dia squabbling, the 1972 cham-
pionship game brought people
together, even if for only one
night.
Kaza said he tells a compre-
hensive story in his book, in-
cluding Oregon’s sometimes
sordid racial history, most no-
tably the state serving as fertile
recruiting ground for the Ku
Klux Klan.
Kaza’s own experience had
also given him a perspective for
race relations.
As a fifth grader living in Bea-
verton, he was part of group
of white students who joined
a voluntary program to attend
Martin Luther King Elementary
School in Portland, where 97%
of the students were Black. Kaza
was one of two white students in
his class.
Courtesy of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Public Information
Justin Crofoot and his wife, Sarai, have resumed a door-to-door
ministry since Sept. 1 in Sisters.
Local Jehovah’s
Witness return to
knocking on doors
Jehovah’s Witnesses resumed
their trademark door-to-door
ministry beginning on Sept. 1
after a 30-month suspension
due to the global pandemic.
The decision marks the
complete restoration of all
pre-pandemic in-person ac-
tivities for the nearly 1.3 mil-
lion Jehovah’s Witnesses in the
12,000 congregations in the
United States.
Houses of worship (called
Kingdom Halls) were re-
opened on April 1, witnessing
in public places resumed on
May 31 and in-person conven-
tions are again being planned
for 2023.
“It has been quite a long
time, but we are really looking
forward to conversing with our
neighbors face to face,” said
Justin Crofoot, who returned
to an in-person ministry with
his wife, Sarai. “We have made
an effort to reach as many peo-
ple as we can through letter
writing and over the phone,
but really nothing compares to
being able to visit in person.”
The suspension of the pub-
lic ministry was a proactive
response by the organization
to keep communities and con-
gregants safe. The move was
also unprecedented. Jehovah’s
Witnesses had been preaching
from door to door without in-
terruption for more than 100
years through an economic de-
pression, two world wars and
global unrest, but COVID-19
demanded a different response.
“We believe that the early
decision to shut down all
in-person activities for more
than two years has saved many
lives,” said Robert Hendriks,
U.S. spokesperson for Jehovah’s
Witnesses.
The return to an in-per-
son ministry coincides with a
global campaign to offer an in-
teractive Bible study program,
available in hundreds of lan-
guages and offered at no cost.
The pandemic forced Je-
hovah’s Witnesses to quickly
pivot to virtual meetings and
conventions while conduct-
ing their ministry exclusively
through letters, phone calls
and virtual Bible studies. This
has led to growth in meeting
attendance and the number of
congregants, with more than
400,000 newly baptized wit-
nesses joining the ranks of
120,000 congregations globally
in just the first two years of the
pandemic.
OBITUARY
D N
Clifford Dale Harris
March 19, 1947 -
September 23, 2022
of Redmond
Services: Celebration of Life to
be held at a later time to be
determined
OBITUARY
DEADLINE
Call to ask about
our deadlines
541-385-5809
Gregory
Dale
Peterson
June 17, 1956 - August 6, 2022
Gregory Dale Peterson passed away on August
6, 2022 at the age of 66. Surrounded by his
wife and daughters, Greg passed peacefully at
his home in Weiser, Idaho.
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RESEARCH DURING A PANDEMIC
Kaza, who worked as a sports-
writer for the Valley Times news-
paper in Beaverton from 1974 to
1982 before, as he puts it, “leav-
ing journalism behind,” said he
initially decided to embark on
a book project in the spring of
2020.
“I started realizing this was
a story I could weave together,”
he said.
After living in England for
about 25 years, he returned to
the U.S. in 2016. He and his wife,
Yee Cheng, bought a four-screen
movie theater in Sisters.
Of course something else hap-
pened in the spring of 2020.
COVID-19.
Kaza said the pandemic both
helped and hindered his work
on “High Contrast.”
Although he certainly
wouldn’t describe this as a pos-
itive, because his theater was
closed for 431 days — a number,
he notes with a rueful chuckle,
he will always recall with pre-
cision — Kaza had more time
than he would have had other-
wise for research.
But the situation also forced
him to conduct interviews — in-
cluding with several members of
Baker’s 1972 team — remotely
rather than in person.
Kaza also talked with John
Heriza, who was Baker’s assis-
tant coach in 1972 and lives in
Baker City, and with Greg Ham-
mond, Gary Hammond’s son.
Gary Hammond died on
April 26, 2008, at Pendleton. He
was 88.
Two starters on Baker’s 1972
team — Daryl Ross and Mike
Davis, the top two scorers —
have also passed away.
Ross died Jan. 7, 2015, at age
60 from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s dis-
ease).
Davis died Jan. 4, 2016, at
age 61.
Jill Conway
PA-C
Matthew Clark, MD
Sam Christensen Lindsey Clark
PA-C
PA-C
Bend - Redmond - La Pine
DERM-HEALTH.COM
Greg was born to Ellsworth and Lois (Brown)
Peterson on June 17, 1956 on Parris Island,
South Carolina. Following his father’s service
in the Marine Corps, Greg spent the majority
of his childhood in Wisconsin.
Greg was preceded in death by his parents as
well as his son Lance Corporal Dale Gregory
Peterson, who was killed in action in Fallujah,
Iraq.
Greg is survived by his wife: Karen (Seagal)
Peterson; his siblings: Mona (Timothy), Timothy
(Liz), Sue, and Bud (Karen); his daughters and
sons-in-law: Marci and Kyle Sullens, Melissa
and Jake Davies, and Mandy Peterson, as well
as his beloved grandchildren: Amelia, Olivia,
Luella, Sophia, and Dalten.
Greg was a steadfast and God-fearing man who
spent a career in service in law enforcement
and his free time with those closest to him on
the farm or out hunting and fishing.
A celebration of life is scheduled at 1:00 on
October 15, 2022 to be held at the Redmond
Grange located at 707 SW Kalama Ave,
Redmond, Oregon.